Where do people think we actually come from?
JOBURG – Where do we really come from is the question that begs as scientists find new evidence that casts the ancient question into wide upheaval.
Wits University, in collaboration with leading universities from as far and wide as Australia and the United States have revealed some interesting facts about human existence as we know it.
Only a year and a half ago was it announced that the richest fossil hominin site in Africa had been discovered and that it contained a new hominin species named Homo naledi by the scientists who described it. Today, however, scientists say the Homo naledi remains from the Dinaledi Chamber appear to be astonishingly young in age. It is said that when it was first announced in September 2015, it lived about 335 000 and 236 000 years ago.
Read: Four ways Homo naledi is shaking up the human family tree
As a result, scientists say it is likely that primitive small-brained hominins lived alongside Homo sapiens. It is the first time, however, that it has been demonstrated that another species of hominin survived alongside the first humans in Africa.
Dating #Homonaledi involved coordinated efforts of 10 separate laboratories in Australia, Europe and South Africa https://t.co/uur9Jnffd9 pic.twitter.com/Clfe6QMSOp
— eLife – the journal (@eLife) May 9, 2017
In addition to the long-awaited age of the naledi fossils from the Dinaledi Chamber, further new discoveries, that of a second chamber in the Rising Star cave system – part of the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site located in Bloubank River valley, about 800 metres southwest of Swartkrans, containing additional specimens of Homo naledi – include a child and a partial skeleton of an adult male with a remarkably well-preserved skull.
Read: BREAKING NEWS: New species discovered at Cradle of Humankind
Professor Lee Berger of Wits University was part of the team who made the new discoveries. The discovery of a second chamber has led the team to argue that there is more support for the controversial hypothesis that Homo naledi deliberately disposed of its dead in these remote, hard-to-reach caverns.
.@LeeRberger is @MaropengSA where his team will shortly announce their latest #homonaledi find. Watch live @ 9am https://t.co/hr59sQHcbl pic.twitter.com/4Wz0ifSxlT
— Wits_News (@Wits_News) May 9, 2017
“The dating of naledi was extremely challenging,” said structural geologist, Professor Paul Dirks of James Cook University in Australia, who worked with 19 other scientists from laboratories and institutions around the world, including laboratories in South Africa and Australia, to establish the age of the fossils. “Eventually, six independent dating methods allowed us to constrain the age of this population of Homo naledi to a period known as the late Middle Pleistocene.”
Read: Getting to know Naledi
Scientists have thus concluded that the age for this population of hominins indicates that Homo naledi may have survived for as long as two million years alongside other species of hominins in Africa. And given its young age, in a period known as the late Middle Pleistocene, it was previously thought that only Homo sapiens (modern humans) existed in Africa.
#HomoNaledi – Scientists have made more surprising discoveries. Read all about it on @IOL at 10am. pic.twitter.com/KpSiDZJOZF
— IOL News (@IOL) May 9, 2017
However, scientists say it is at precisely this time that the rise of what has been called “modern human behaviour” in southern Africa emerged – behaviour attributed, until now, to the rise of modern humans thought to represent the origins of complex modern human activities such as burial of the dead, self-adornment and complex tools.
#homonaledi dated to 236,000 to 335,000 years ago with the help of the @WitsUniversity #OSL lab to date the sediments hosting the fossils pic.twitter.com/zcBqHLmjT8
— Wits Geoscience (@WitsGeoscience) May 9, 2017
.@LeeRberger recaps on the amazing #HomoNaledi discovery, announced in September 2015. pic.twitter.com/19uO69wt0i
— MaropengSA (@MaropengSA) May 9, 2017
Edited by Beryl Knipe
Add us on Whatsapp for the latest news by adding 079 4395 345 to your contact list and just send your name to us so we can save your number. Click here to find out more about our Whatsapp policy.
